Thanks
Loriowar for inviting Habr. I've been reading for a long time, but I never wrote. I myself am an IT recruiter from Canada, and it is very cool for me to read how programmers perceive the recruitment process and hr-s. I myself once tried to become a programmer, went through all the frenzy of finding a job and even in a foreign country, in a foreign language, and at the time of the collapse of the dotcom market. Then I tired of wriggling like an eel on a skillet in front of stupid recruiters, and I decided to become one of them. I thought that I would never behave like them, but I had to, the very logic of hiring forced it. So I am familiar with the claims of both parties to each other.
I washed for several days, did not know where to start. The specificity of the North American recruitment is familiar to me thoroughly, but that will be interesting Habr is not quite sure. I just decided to start with the description of the agent's kitchen, and then how it goes. If interested, ask yourself the topics.
By the way, recruitment in the States and in Canada is the same, except for some aspects caused by differences in legislation and immigration policies. And so, the methods, approaches, tools are all the same.
By the way, the first difference is that in the States there still exist agencies called Employment Services / Placement Consultants / Job Placement Agency, etc. They take payment from candidates for the fact of employment. In Russia, such firms seem to be called recruitment agencies. In Canada, and in my opinion in England, this type of activity is prohibited by law because considered unethical.
Knowing how the recruitment works, and since I myself am a Canadian, I basically agree that you cannot take payment from candidates for employment. First, it is in fact the purchase of a position and, potentially, the possibility of a pullback and grease. Such agencies can roll back corporate hr and arrange for those who pay the most, which directly contradicts the interests of the employer to hire the most qualified employee, and creates unfair competition among applicants. Secondly, even if there are no bribes, usually such agencies require the signing of an exclusive agreement. This means that the candidate will pay them in any case, even if he finds a job himself. This is generally a win-win. It is clear that a person cannot sit without work for a long time and 80-90 percent will still get settled, even if their placement consultant will sit and smoke bamboo. But he certainly will not do this, but will create a kind of turbulent activity. Before the Internet era, similar agencies were selling access to their exclusive job base. Naturally, it was impossible to check which vacancies were real there.
I myself once turned to a similar agency for fun to see how they are spinning their headstock. I lived in the United States on a non-employment matrimonial visa. And they and I knew perfectly well that in my specialty (HR, recruitment), American employers did not sponsor a visa. But they were ready to take my $$$ to help me with employment. It should be noted that such agencies are getting smaller. All job search sites recommend candidates not to work with firms that do not take payment from the employer. And, probably, such a business will wither away over time.
At the same time, one should not confuse such agencies with career counseling firms - Career Coaching / Career Councelling. This is a completely legal business in Canada and in the States. They take payment from candidates not for employment, but for a specific service: resume writing, interview preparation, psychometric assessment, psychological profile preparation, choice or change of career. While I was preparing this article, I looked at the prices for these services: “correct” the resume - $ 150-200, write a resume from scratch - $ 350-450, 2 hours of preparation for the interview (mock interview) - $ 300.
Outplacement Firms / Agencies - they are hired by a former (not future) employer for reduced employees. This is a mix of career counseling and recruitment agencies. Such firms help reduced employees to create a resume, look for a job, position themselves in the market, and can recommend them to other clients. In principle, it is useful for those who spent 20 years in one office, and the world has changed in that time. But the true role of such offices is to get the dismissed employee into the room, report the decision, assemble the monatories and withdraw from the office, and do all this so that there is no nervous breakdown. Just hr-s and immediate superiors, of course, do not want to engage in mass reductions themselves.
Temp (Temporary Placement) Agency is a temporary employment agency. For IT-Schnick they are not particularly relevant. They are engaged in small clerk positions and blue-collar. Employees are employees of the agency and perform short-term tasks, work on substitution for clients of such an agency on an hourly basis. The agency simply takes a certain margin. Very often such temporary contracts are used as a trial period. An employer can find a candidate himself, hire him through a temporary agency, and after 3-6 months take on staff. The most prominent example of such an agency known throughout the world is Kelly Services.
Staffing / Recruitment Agency are the usual recruitment agencies with which we are all familiar. This is a song, this is a whole world that deserves a separate article. So to be continued.